A Dream Within a Dream by Edgar Allan Poe

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow–
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand–
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep–while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

Edgar Allan Poe’s poem A Dream within a Dream can be seen in many ways.  The poem how I see it is about how dreams and real life are related.

Part A of the poem (The first paragraph) is talking about how real life just slips away just as a dream does.  All the events which you cherish and wish would never end do ,”That my days have been a dream”. In a dream you eventually wake up and everything that you have done is gone. You have parted from that dream, just as you go from the last day to the next. The final line of the first part “Is but a dream within a dream” meaning a dream is just a dream within a dream.The second paragraph is talking about an actual dream and it’s relation to real life. As you are in the dream you try to hold on to it, but you just can’t save it. Your grasp slips and it’s gone. A theme statement that I believe would go well with this is “Everything that happens good or bad will end, no matter how much we try to hold on”. I agree with this poem in the sense that everyday slips away as a dream does. I think most people can agree that they have been in a situation where they didn’t want that moment to end.

So all in all Edgar Allan Poe’s poem A Dream Within a Dream is very relate able. It touches on something that most of us feel at one point or another.